The Atlantic Interview: Caitlin Flanagan

Summary

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The Atlantic Interview: Caitlin Flanagan

Podcast: The David Frum Show / The Atlantic Interview
Host: Jeffrey Goldberg (Editor in Chief, The Atlantic)
Guest: Caitlin Flanagan (Staff Writer, The Atlantic)
Date: February 28, 2018

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Episode Overview

This episode brings Caitlin Flanagan, celebrated journalist and cultural critic, into conversation with The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg. They tackle two major contemporary issues: the culture of male behavior in American fraternities—spotlighted by a tragic death at Penn State—and the complexities of the #MeToo movement. Across the episode, Flanagan’s incisive, iconoclastic commentary challenges prevailing attitudes about gender, campus culture, and sexual politics, while Goldberg pushes for clarity on the lines between positive and toxic behaviors. The dialogue peers into generational divides, societal expectations, and the intersection between personal responsibility and institutional norms.

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Main Topics & Key Discussion Points

1. Setting the Conversation (00:08–01:34)

• Corrections and Introductions:
  • Flanagan humorously corrects Goldberg on her awards and the circumstances of her visit. She jokes: “I’ve only ever won one award, unless you count Bitch Magazine calling me the douchebag of the century” (00:44).
• Framing:
  • The episode’s twin themes: male behavior as exposed in fraternity hazing deaths, and the ongoing evolution of the #MeToo movement.

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2. Fraternity Culture and the Penn State Tragedy (01:34–12:34)

Fraternities as Male Spaces (01:34–04:27)

• Flanagan argues that the "feminization" of college campuses has driven young men to find identity and belonging in fraternities—a dynamic with roots in the perception that college was overly "feminizing" even in the 19th century.
  • “The typical fraternity member is still white, straight, conservative, male… not welcome in many places on campus... demonized.” (02:25)
• She describes fraternities as both outdated and insufficient for guiding young men: “Fraternities are sort of pointless exercises... They're not places that make men out of boys.” (05:39)

The Tim Piazza Case: A Microcosm (06:15–11:28)

• Flanagan details the fatal hazing incident at Penn State—a culture of unchecked excess, cruelty, and criminal neglect:
  • “Tim Piazza... took a devastating fall… the members were craven… they hit him, they slapped him around, they threw water on him... left him alone in a room where he all but died.” (06:38)
• Security cameras captured the tragedy, fueling introspection and legal struggle over culpability and reform.
• Fraternities attract “sadists,” she argues, and groupthink diffuses individual moral responsibility:
  • “Oftentimes there’ll be one or two sadists within a fraternity... when there’s a really bad hazing thing… that’s often the case.” (08:22)
• The emotional toll on participants emerges after the fact:
  • “At least one young man… was seen to fall apart in the hallway outside the courtroom and just sobbing that he couldn’t bear what he’d been a part of.” (09:08)

Institutional Questions (10:10–12:34)

• The dependence of universities on fraternities is mutual: “Could universities survive without the support of the fraternities? Fraternities are one of the few things that lure young men to colleges.” (10:20)
• Despite outrage, reform is elusive; fraternity culture is deeply embedded, linked to American traditions such as Freemasonry.
  • “Fraternity membership is rising… It’s somewhere that you’re not inherently just called as sort of a loathsome person by dint of your gender.” (12:15)

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3. #MeToo, Modern Gender, and the Nature of Masculinity (12:34–21:09)

Differentiating Gender Roles (12:40–16:10)

• Flanagan distances herself from traditional gender roles but asserts the value—and perils—of disregarding the "profound nature of masculinity.”
  • “This toxic masculinity that we talk about is one thing, but what’s not given value is the profound nature of masculinity in its great and good aspects.” (13:10)
• She critiques the current discourse as alienating men from conversations about gender violence, referencing a #MeToo discussion at The Atlantic:
  • “If you want men to get involved… say, we need some muscle on a project… you would not have been able to withstand how many men would have shown up.” (13:48)
• Flanagan describes millennial women as strong in public but "weak" in intimate contexts, citing the Aziz Ansari case as evidence:
  • “They’re so strong and they’re so confident. But in their relationships with men… they’re weak. And I think that is something we should fix.” (15:44)

Values, Sex, and Affirmative Consent (16:10–19:41)

• Men and women are “profoundly different” psychologically and behaviorally, even within broad overlaps.
• Modern sexual expectations, Flanagan contends, obscure underlying needs for connection, identity, and mutual responsibility.
  • “What all these women… were saying was, I want someone to protect me. But they never would have said, I want a particular man to protect me.” (17:18)
• The damage of “hookup culture” surfaces in terms like “anti-orgasmic,” with Flanagan bringing comedic bravado:
  • “This is the first time that the term anti orgasmic has been spoken on this podcast, by the way. So congratulations.” (18:17)

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4. Feminist Poison, Generational Divides, and the #MeToo Spectrum (20:17–27:05)

• Flanagan defines “feminist poison” as a distortion of liberation, turning sexual egalitarianism into a pressure for emotionless, transactional sex, to the detriment of women’s well-being.
  • “It wasn’t the patriarchy who told women, you really need to be as sexually free as men… That was a feminist movement that taught them that.” (21:16)
• She critiques the recursive blame of “the patriarchy” for sexual malaise among women, arguing instead for a reevaluation and renewal of values.
  • “Today, the answer is yes. Of course I have to do it because something in my head told me I have to do it. And what’s in your head is not the patriarchy. What’s in your head is some feminist cant.” (26:07)

Differentiating Bad Behavior: Aziz, Charlie Rose, Weinstein (23:01–25:07)

• Flanagan insists on drawing lines between harassment, assault, boorishness, and criminality, resisting the view that “it’s all wrong.”
  • “We should never… it’s quite insane that we would sit around saying, how can you tell the difference between an assault, something boorish, something flirtatious…” (23:45)

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5. Civics, Morality, and American Identity (27:05–31:47)

• Both agree that contemporary public and family life suffer from lack of moral clarity and shared narrative.
  • “Parents are alone in this world… it’s so hypersexualized for kids… there’s nothing out there that’s good and nurturing for kids outside of the haven of the family.” (28:14)
• Flanagan sees the crisis solved only by returning to core American documents—the Declaration, Constitution, and Gettysburg Address—urging Americans to internalize their “terms of service agreement” as citizens.
  • “If you read these documents… you understand the terms of service agreement between you and the country and what it will… protect for you.” (30:24)

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6. Final Reflections: Responsibility, Agency, and Speaking Out (31:47–34:23)

• Personal responsibility is core: “At a certain point… it’s about the person’s responsibility to herself... You have to own it. You have to create it. You have to decide what the limits are.” (32:05)
• Flanagan closes on her trademark bluntness and patriotism:
  • “Because… this is why it sounds so corny. I love America… You don’t have to be liked. Willy Loman should stop worrying. We have these freedoms that everybody mocks. You can say whatever you want… After that, I don’t care if people are offended.” (33:21)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On male discomfort in modern colleges:
  “There are so many events talking about the problems that they have caused historically and the problems that they cause currently, and that patriarchy is currently functioning and that it has to be smashed and it has to be destroyed.” (03:40, Flanagan)

• On fraternity tragedy:
  “Many people who looked at him could see from his bruises… that he was seriously injured. But the members were craven. They were afraid they’d get in trouble… and then they left him alone in a room where he all but died.” (06:41, Flanagan)

• On the danger of conflating all forms of male misbehavior:
  “It’s quite insane that we would sit around saying, how can you tell the difference between an assault, something boorish, something flirtatious…” (23:45, Flanagan)

• On feminist “poison”:
  “It was not the patriarchy who told women, you really need to be as sexually free as men… That was a feminist movement that taught them that.” (21:16, Flanagan)

• Agency and sexual culture:
  “You have to own it. You have to create it. You have to decide what the limits are... no one should be intruding on it.” (32:05, Flanagan)

• On speaking out:
  “You have the right to say it, you have the right to think it… and beyond that, it just doesn’t matter.” (34:18, Flanagan)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Introduction & Corrections: 00:08–01:34
• Fraternity Culture & Penn State Tragedy: 01:34–11:28
• Tradition, Masculinity & College Shifts: 12:34–16:10
• Millennial Women, Sexual Politics, and #MeToo: 16:10–21:09
• Feminist Poison & Sexual Expectations: 21:09–27:05
• Drawing Lines: Aziz, Rose, Weinstein: 23:45–25:07
• Civics, Values, and American Identity: 27:05–31:47
• Responsibility, Agency, Speaking Out: 31:47–34:23

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Conclusion

Caitlin Flanagan’s conversation with Jeffrey Goldberg makes for an unflinching, provocative, and often humorous exploration of American gender politics, campus life, and the search for moral grounding in confused times. Sharp, unsparing, and at times controversial, Flanagan insists on the importance of individual and institutional responsibility, refusing either nostalgia for the past or sloganeering for the future. She pushes listeners to re-engage with the nation’s founding ethos and to confront honestly the messy realities underlying both tragedy and progress.

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Transcript

[A]

An official message from Medicare.

[B]

I'm saving money on my Medicare prescriptions.

[A]

Maybe you can save, too.

[B]

See if you qualify for Medicare's extra help.

[A]

It pays. To find out, go to ssa.gov extrahelp paid for by the US Department of Health and Human Services. Welcome to the Atlantic interview. My guest today is Caitlin Flanagan, who is one of America's most famous writers and certainly one of the Atlantic's most famous writers. And she's won a bunch of prizes for her great journalism. She happened to be in town, and I said, let's go make a podcast. So welcome Caitlin Flanagan.

[B]

Two corrections.

[A]

Well, you can't correct me before we've even started. Okay, okay, correct me.

[B]

I've only ever won one award, unless you count Bitch magazine calling me the douchebag of the century.

[A]

Wait, you were? What is Bitch Magazine?

[B]

I don't know. I don't think it exists anymore, but I have it on my cv.

[A]

Really? It was a name calibrated for success. It was on the newsstand. Okay, what was the other correction?

[B]

I didn't happen to be in town. You kindly invited me to town.

[A]

Oh, yeah, that's true. All right.

[B]

And bought my ticket.

[A]

Cause that's boring. She's in town in Washington because I invited her to town to, among other things, talk about her work on the MeToo campaign, her writing on MeToo, and to talk to you, the podcast audience, about her National Magazine Award nominated piece on a death in a fraternity at Penn State. We're gonna talk about that. Caitlin, welcome to the podcast.

[B]

Thank you for having me.

[A]

Very nice. Very nice. Caitlin, we're talking about two different kinds of male behavior that society mainly finds unacceptable these days. Is that a fair linkage?

[B]

Yeah, definitely. These kind of violent hazing events that take place in fraternities is certainly a male event. And then what's going on with the MeToo movement seems to include male behavior and a certain kind of female response to that male behavior. So, yeah.

[A]

Why don't we ever see sorority deaths?

[B]

Well, there's a couple of reasons. Number one is that the fraternity experience in some ways is a substitute for the military, in that there was a notion early on in college life in the 19th century that college was a very feminizing experience, that instead of doing something powerful with your body and defending your country, that you were sitting around and reading things and being lorded over by these fussy old ministers who used to run all the great colleges. And that by joining a fraternity where you had to do dangerous and scary things, you would prove your Manhood. And I think the link to that and today is that colleges have once again become extremely feminized. And they're not welcoming places to the typical kind of man. They're more diverse than they were. But the typical fraternity member is still white, straight, conservative, male. And they are not welcome in many places on campus. They're kind of demonized. And so I think the feminization of the college campus, just as even all male colleges were considered feminizing in the 19th century, I think that's led once again to a very extreme kind of fraternity behavior right now.

[A]

Is it possible that the behavior of these males and the things that they seek is not natural in just a product of being male, but it's a construct in a way, and that what people see as the feminization of males on the college campus is just asking males not to be assholes?

[B]

No, no. Because when you go on a college campus today, I often wonder what it would be like to be this dreaded thing of being just, let's just say, a straight white male. Because there are so many events talking about the problems that they have caused historically and the problems that they cause currently, and that patriarchy is currently functioning and that it has to be smashed and it has to be destroyed. And, you know, it's absolutely no surprise that fewer and fewer men are going to college. And that's absolutely feeding into the problem because it changes the dynamic between men and women on a college campus. So I don't think it's so much that men are. Men themselves are being feminized. It's that the campus politics are feminized in a particular kind of weaponized way.

[A]

I mean, I happen to believe that it's good for boys to have hard experiences, to have hard physical experiences. Early army service is very useful. It was useful to me. But then I think to myself, well, maybe that's not a gender specific issue. Maybe females should also have those kind of tough experiences.

[B]

Young men crave to be in some position where men of authority are in leadership and in role models and setting for them tasks that difficult. They crave that very much. And they have an innate desire to take that wild energy of male youth and direct it in some purposeful and meaningful way. That's a deep male need that crosses time and culture and even this nutty moment in which we unfortunately find ourselves. And there are precious few places outside of campus sport where the very maleness of a young male student is not reviled but is welcomed. And that place is a fraternity.

[A]

And unfortunately, from Your perspective, that's a negative place to act out this wild and natural maleness.

[B]

Right. Because fraternities are sort of pointless exercises. They're just places to have fun and they're places to drink and have a clubhouse and watch football. They're not places that make men out of boys. Maybe in some past day there was a notion of a fraternity man, but the fraternity man is now a frat boy. So there isn't that anymore.

[A]

ROTC would be one reason for that.

[B]

Right. And that does seem to be coming back in favor with students. Is that true? Is there more ROTC now than there was in the 90s?

[A]

I think certainly after Don't Ask, Don't Tell was gotten rid of, campuses were more amenable.

[B]

Right, right, right. That's what it was.

[A]

I don't know culturally if that's a thing, but. Well, take us very specifically to Penn State. Give us the two minute version of the tragedy of Penn State.

[B]

Penn State is a deeply problematic place which has basically for many years been a powerful football team to which college was attached. So within that dynamic, the fraternities that have produced generations of pretty tough hazing and all the bad parts of fraternities have gone virtually unchecked. And one of these fraternities had already been closed, was the worst of the worst, but had been recently been reopened. And on the first night in which a group of pledges accepted their membership bids, they were required to drink a lot of booze. It was actually one of the least hazy of things that fraternities do. It was just one night of heavy drinking. But a pledge named Tim Piazza, by all accounts a very Nice young man, 19 years old, took a devastating fall and all the while thoroughly intoxicated. Thoroughly intoxicated. And was seriously injured. And many people who looked at him could see from his bruises that were very evident that he was seriously injured. But the members were craven. They were afraid they'd get in trouble for it. And they were also brutal. They decided to just treat any other very drunk kid, which meant they, they hit him, they slapped him around, they threw water on him, they threw things at him and then they left him alone in a room where he all but died. And that room happened to have security cameras in it. So a horrible, horrible video of this young man desperately trying to get out of that fraternity and get help, crawling and crawling across the floor over a 12 hour period was discovered by the police. And he was eventually located and died two days later. And so it's really kind of a test case of will the young men who were part of that, will they be found guilty in a criminal case of manslaughter? And have the fraternities now gone so out of control that something needs to be done to reform them nationally?

[A]

Talk about the young men who are allegedly culpable in this death. Are they monsters?

[B]

That's such a good question. Fraternities are really attractive places for sadists. Oftentimes there'll be one or two sadists within a fraternity, and that's when there's a really bad hazing thing or something grotesque happens. That's often the case.

[A]

The sadist who drives the process.

[B]

Yes. When it gets really weird, you know, when you hear of a weird branding incident or something and you really look into it, there's oftentimes one brother who was just attracted by all the hazing, and he ran it. He.

[A]

By branding, you mean branding with fire branding. Yeah, actual branding.

[B]

Right. And anyways, they. The young man who was the president of it, Brendan Young, seemed, if not to be a sadist, to be very calculating in his behaviors throughout the night and was really the architect of this death. I think he is a problematic kid. Some of the others were brutal kids.

[A]

You call them kids, but they're actually adults.

[B]

Legally, they're adults. But as I say, they're in this process that young men go through during this age where they're desperately trying to become men, and they don't know any way to do it. And the way they find to do it is by drinking and being rough with each other if they're in a fraternity. And some of them were sort of neutral about it and were kind of in groupthink. But afterwards, at least one young man at the initial hearing, after some of the video was shown, he was seen to fall apart in the hallway outside the courtroom and just sobbing that he couldn't bear what he'd been a part of. And I think there is a lot of moral stain that goes on for some of these young men that they get roped into things, convinced that it's okay. They survived it themselves. And afterwards, it's very, very often when a kid breaks in a fraternity when he really cracks, it's not when he's hazing, it's when he's forced to haze others. That's often the moral stain they live with for years afterwards.

[A]

Right. Go to this issue of the responsibility of a university in this situation. Would fraternities survive without the support of the universities?

[B]

That's a good question. The real question is, could universities survive without the support of the fraternities. Fraternities are one of the few things that lure young men to colleges.

[A]

So what is going to happen at Penn State, both in this case and at Penn State and its fraternity system?

[B]

Well, in an exciting movie version of this story, you would have the fact that happened that over the summer, most of the most serious charges were thrown out because there were two essential hours of tape of this crucial videotape that the young men erased before the cops got there. And that particular machine that had recorded it had been sent to the FBI, which apparently is capable of some things because they managed to recover these two hours of tape over the fall. And now there are many more young men. Several more young men have been brought in with charges, and charges have been reopened on some of the ones who had them dismissed, the manslaughter charges. And there's going to be a five day hearing about whether or not these charges will be brought forward to a criminal trial. I think next month it's gonna happen.

[A]

Do you think that these cases. And they do repeat. Right. We have deaths every year in fraternities. Parties gone awry, hazing gone awry. You think anything's gonna change?

[B]

You know, they always say, or I guess I always say that it's the royal vey. It's the royal vey. Everyone should say this thing now. You know, fraternities grew out of Freemasonry, and in a sense, George Washington himself was originally a fraternity boy because he was a freemason. It is as deep and old in the American culture, this whole strand of Freemasonry that leads into fraternity culture. It's something deep, it's something strange. We don't give it enough credit for the role that it's historically and I think as balkanized as the college campus is becoming. The social justice warrior as to use that phrase of college campus, are making the fraternity men even more entrenched. And fraternity membership is rising, as we can understand, because it's somewhere that you're not inherently just called as sort of a loathsome person by dint of your gender.

[A]

It's the only place these males can go where they don't feel loathed, which is what you're arguing.

[B]

One of them. Mm.

[A]

Right. You are. Not to put labels on you, but I'm about to put a label on you.

[B]

I don't feel safe.

[A]

You're. Well, the Atlantic is not a safe space. Okay. You're known as a cultural conservative. That's shorthand for a critique of you which says that you believe in traditional gender roles and that you believe that there is such a thing as natural, wild male behavior that has to be channeled appropriately. You do not believe that the genders are the same?

[B]

Well, I don't believe in traditional gender roles in the sense that I think that women should do one kind of role and men should do the other kind of role. I don't believe in that at all. I think people should do whatever works best for them and for their lives. This toxic masculinity that we talk about is one thing, but what's not given value is the profound nature of masculinity in its great and good aspects. And, you know, we had a big event here at the Atlantic. You had an event at the Atlantic. And I was invited to it. About me too. And it was A large group of people came, many men invited, many women invited. Almost only women showed up. And there were complaints, bitter complaints. Why don't men come to things like this? And I was like, I would not come to this in a million years and get bitched out by you guys. Like, if you want men to get involved, let me tell you, if you threw out, put out an ad and say, listen, this is some women talking right now, and we need some muscle on a project. There are rapists out there. We're not safe. They're hurting us. Can you come and help us? You would not have been able to withstand. How many men would have shown up to the Atlantic. Men have the good men. And most men that we encounter in life are. Have a great desire to protect the weak, a great desire to protect women. And they are not up for being endlessly told that their hookups are acts of sexual assault and that everything they say is wrong and that they are just their very utterances are part of some grand patriarchal scheme to dominate women sexually.

[A]

Just open, parenthetical. But you're framing this as strong and weak. And I think a lot of millennial women, especially, might hear you say, imply that women are the weaker sex and need the protection of men and would say that they're offended by that.

[B]

I see a lot of weakness in these millennial women. We talk about the Aziz Ansari case. You know, a woman who's so weakened that she can't say, I don't want to have this kind of sex. Don't do this to me. I'm going to leave. I think that's an act of crippling weakness on her part. And I think what's interesting is that in most ways, as millennial women blow me away with Their strength. I can't tell you how many young women I know who are doing all these things I would have been terrified to do as a young person. They're often going to parts of the world that are very hostile to women. They go into fields that I never even considered going into. They play sports in a way I never would have considered. They're so strong and they're so confident. But in their relationships with men, in these intimate moments, they're weak. And I think that is something we should fix. I think we should help them to be stronger in that situation.

[A]

How do you differentiate between positive male behaviors and negative male behaviors? Part of that is acknowledging, I think, and this is something that you do, that men and women are different. And maybe that's not something that people do very much anymore.

[B]

Men and women are different. There's a whole range, obviously. But in the middle of that distribution, most women are similar to each other and most men are similar to one another in certain aspects. I've known many brave women. I've known many strong women. I've had many women help me with things that men couldn't help me with. And I've known many sensitive and delicate men. But in general, there is a profound, deep male urge and desire to do something valorous with that incredible physical strength that they have. And to be a protector of a woman is a strong desire. And what all these women last night were saying was, I want someone to protect me. But they never would have said, I want a particular man to protect me. But they want affirmative consent to protect them. They want bystander intervention to protect them. They want a demolished patriarchy to protect them. They're speaking out from some deep desire that because of this sort of feminist poison that they've been drinking, they're not able to say what it is. And what they want is a relationship, you know, if not a marriage, that if these young women put their sexual events within a context of a relationship with someone who deeply cared about them and had a great sense of responsibility toward them and got a lot of identity out of personal identity, out of the fact that this incredibly worthy woman, this strong, great smart woman, thinks I'm worthy to be with her, I'm worthy to have her, you know, her time and her attention, that I'll go to the ends of the earth for this woman. If they had that, they wouldn't be in these horrible hookups that seem anti orgasmic and sad and end up with them crying in a car and saying they've been sexually violated.

[A]

This is the first time that the term anti orgasmic has been spoken on this podcast, by the way. So congratulations.

[B]

Well, I think the podcast itself is anti orgasm.

[A]

Do you?

[B]

Well, I don't know. I haven't listened to the other episodes, but this will bring it back to full orgasmic range.

[A]

By the way. I'm totally offended that you haven't listened, which I think.

[B]

I think I was afraid it would make me anti orgasmic.

[A]

No, I think.

[B]

But Jeffrey Goldberg, don't you agree in your heart, I mean, you manned up and joined the military and learned something about yourself and got a sense of yourself as a man that your high school experience had not given you. And you became profoundly changed in a way that I'm sure connected your sense of being able to defend should you need to your own family. Wouldn't you say that's true?

[A]

Absolutely true. The question I have is, couldn't a woman feel the same exact way? I'm all for it, for taking on the hard experiences to challenge yourself physically also, not just mentally, but physically. But why couldn't a woman feel that same excitement of doing the dangerous thing of feeling? Now I'm equipped to defend my family like a mother bear rather than a father bear. What's the difference?

[B]

Well, I would say the difference is that for a woman, as we see so many millennial women, for a woman to be able to do all those strong things and strong making things and yet feel so weak within a hookup relationship that she is looking for a protector and she's saying that she's been violated means that there's on some intimate level, it's different to be a man than a woman, because a man doesn't come out of those. Those experiences and say, I don't know how to express what I want sexually, that out of the military that tends to not be a men have coming out of the military come back to.

[A]

Something that you said? Will you define feminist poison for me?

[B]

Right. I used to always call myself a feminist when I was young. I thought, this is very important, that I should be equal. And I could see as a young woman many ways that I wasn't equal. And that there was a movement that was seeking and working to help me have equal opportunities was hugely exciting. And then, well, for me, I really fell away after everybody attacked Paula Jones and the different women who were accusing Phil Clinton of sexual.

[A]

The Bill Clinton episode radicalized you in some way.

[B]

It radicalized me. I realized this has become a racket that we're no longer standing up for all women anymore. We're gonna stand up for women who say a Republican assaulted them. And we're gonna protect a man who gets accused of the same thing if he's a Democrat.

[A]

Okay, but that was 20 years ago. Now you have Al Franken losing his job for crimes much less serious than Harvey Weinstein's.

[B]

No, I'm just saying where the radicalization began. That it opened my eyes, that there could be. That we could be. You know, the old notion of a revolution becomes a movement and ends up as a racket. That we could be going into the racket stage. And for me, the idea that it wasn't the patriarchy who told women, you really need to be as sexually free as men. You need to never feel that you should have any emotion attached to it. You should feel absolutely empowered to enact pornographic porn scenarios with a man you don't really know. And at the end, you should feel like, that was great. That was a feminist movement that taught them that it was not the patriarchy. That taught them that the patriarchy couldn't really care less if they enjoyed those experiences or not. And I think there got to be a whole poisonous element that ended up crippling a lot of young women into. They believe that they're constantly being undone by the patriarchy. And in fact, in a lot of respects, they're being undone that because someone told them that an inclination towards children and caring for them and spending all the hours you can with them, in addition to whatever work you have to do in supporting the household, that those were not good things to do, that there was something more important. And we're going to tell you what matters and being really sexually free so that you're gonna have immediate, intense sexual experiences with men you hardly know, and you're gonna be driven toward a life where your children are excess responsibilities, that you shouldn't spend too much time. And I think that that was poisonous. That had nothing to do with equality. And I think it's left women in a very bad position, a lot of them right now, and very confused.

[A]

I would make the observation that no one seems very happy right now. But I could also see the argument explaining that phenomenon by people who say, look, we now know that powerful men in industry after industry after industry have done heinous things to women. And I wanted to talk to you a little bit about the lines you draw. What's the difference between Aziz Ansari and Charlie Rose and Harvey Weinstein? And I ask this with. With serious intent, because there are people, people you're arguing with every day, who Say, do not overly stratify this. Do not categorize it. It's all wrong.

[B]

We should never. It's quite insane that we would sit around saying, how can you tell the difference between an assault, Something boorish, something flirtatious that was misplaced? And how can we tell what things women can handle on their own, independently or in a group? Or what things you need to bring HR in? Or what things do you need to bring the cops in on? It's quite absurd. Obviously, Charlie Rose was right to be fired. The very fact that he made a young woman watch one of his own interviews is enough. That was like that to me was assaultive. So I think he is right to be fired.

[A]

I enjoyed his interviews, and I enjoyed being interviewed by him. I just want to stipulate that. Okay, maybe I'll get in trouble for saying that, but. And it's not a commentary on Charlie Rose's behavior.

[B]

All right, good. But would you have wanted to see him naked at any time?

[A]

There are very few people on the planet I want to see naked.

[B]

Really?

[A]

Yeah. There's 7 billion people on the planet.

[B]

That's true.

[A]

I really don't want to see, really, the vast majority naked. Okay, talk about anti organisms.

[B]

But then why do we have to do the podcast in the nude?

[A]

It's a good point. We're going to actually visit HR after this, and we'll talk about that.

[B]

So what's the question now?

[A]

The question is, why are people critical of you? Why do you think people are critical of you for saying, look, everybody, stop. Pause. Think about the fact that what Aziz Ansari did is not what Harvey Weinstein.

[B]

Did, Because women are very wedded to the fact that the reason their hookups are so unfulfilling, they're very wedded to the notion that it's because of some patriarchal poison that they've swallowed. But if you came of age when I did, I'm 56, so I was in that kind of generation that was after the sexual revolution. And the whole idea was that men were, you know, really going to try to please you sexually. That was the whole point of it. And that, you know, a woman, the idea of sort of entering into things that were unfulfilling for the woman, that. That was just. You had to. As I always say, in the 50s, a woman's answer was no about sex. And in the 70s, when I grew up, the answer was maybe, you know, what do you got? What do you. What are you bringing to the table on this? And today, the ANSW is yes. Of course I have to do it because something in my head told me I have to do it. And what's in your head is not the patriarchy. What's in your head is some feminist cant that made you think that you'll be stronger and freer and more of a badass if you do it. And then you get in this intense, ridiculous pornographic scenario on the very first date where there are, you know, sexual acts that are painful, where, you know, a lot of the problem is they're not having any orgasms. It's just like horrible. Not to sound like Dr. Ruth. The whole thing is horrible. And afterwards, they're rightly hurt, they're rightly sad, they're rightly angry, and they rightly need to talk to their friends. And the language that it gets funneled into is a language of abuse and assault instead of a language of I need different values to achieve the things I want in my sex life.

[A]

Come back to values for a second. And I think this links the Penn State story to. To the MeToo story in some ways. What do our children today know? What is being taught to them about that basic fundamental principle?

[B]

Well, our schools are in a complete morass because they don't. In the past, there was a certain moral code that was expressed probably through, by the time you were in junior high, through civics lessons. There was an idea that running through the American story was this idea of freedom and this idea of equality. And there were certain things that probably were more explicitly Christian than we, than people realized or that people thought maybe wasn't right to put into a public school. So there was a sense that even if you opposed it, there was a sense that there was a commonly shared set of values around what was right and what was wrong. And a lot of those values were terrible and we got rid of them, such as, you know, anti gay things that went through there. But we are completely lost as to that now in the public schools. And, you know, parents are alone in this world. You know, there's no common story out there that I think is valuable and nurturing. There' sit's so hypersexualized for kids, this idea that little girls are empowered, the more intense sexual education they get. Ditto boys. I don't think there's anything out there that's good and nurturing for kids outside of the haven of the family. And I think that we've had this toxic femininity that nobody talks about, which is these young women who don't know how to calibrate their own Meanness and who get together and decide that for whatever reason, they can do profound damage to a man, his career, his reputation in this moment, and are taking revenge out people.

[A]

But wait, most of the public cases that we know about, they seem to be based in something more than a group of toxic feminists deciding to bring down an innocent man. I mean, you're not suggesting that this is a witch hunt of men, are you?

[B]

No, I wrote a piece saying this isn't a witch hunt, because all the cases that we've seen that have been public, these men are very rightly pilloried, and they're very rightly.

[A]

But you're saying the opposite a little.

[B]

Bit, because I've been reporting this story for you on the problem with hr. We are. I think that the story that's not yet told is how many men are getting either anonymously reported or reported for a very minor thing to an HR department. And I think that there is a vengeance. And I think what happened to Aziz Ansari was an absolute act of vengeance. That young woman went back on Twitter and said, let's put our abusers on blast. Mine is Aziz Ansari. And then she tried to get her story told in legitimate press, and nobody would touch it because it was anonymous and lots of other reasons. And then she finally got to the very dreg circling the drain and found this place, babe.net, and she enacted her revenge on him. And that cabal of girls that run that thing exacted their revenge on him.

[A]

What's missing right now from your perspective in American civic life, in American family life, and the way we talk about the way we treat each other.

[B]

Okay. I think there's a crisis right now that could only be solved in one way, which is that every single American needs to sit down and read the following. The Declaration, the Constitution, and the Gettysburg Address, which is often called the check on the Declaration to see did we live up to these promises? If you read these documents and if you understand these documents, even on a rudimentary basis, then you understand the terms of service agreement between you and the country and what it will put itself on the line to protect for you. And you will understand how rare and good those things are, and you will understand that they are those things. And no more that the country will. That there's a criminal process if a crime was committed against you, and no more if you had a. You know, in any of the. Every single one of these questions comes back to the terms of service agreement. And we have young people who just don't Know, those documents, they just hit agree on the terms of service agreement so that they could go on and learn some radical niche thing. And the things that young people, even at good colleges seem to believe are true about America are not true. And they don't understand at a fundamental level what the country is that they live in.

[A]

Link this observation to the current moment, the me too moment. What's the connection?

[B]

Well, the connection is we're talking about crime, and then we're talking about things that are not right in a workplace, and then we're talking about things that aren't right, you know, in an intimate relationship. That at a certain point along that continuum, it's no longer about the government's responsibility to its citizens. At a certain point, it's about the person's responsibility to herself. And I have no moral problems at all with women having incredibly free sex lives. Go for it. I. You know, some of the women I've admired most in my life, writers. You know, I think Mary McCarthy, like, I really. I really respect a woman, you know, that says that's the sex life she's gonna create for herself. But you have to own it. You have to create it. You have to decide what the limits are. If you want affirmative consent, you have to tell the man before, because that's your private sexual behavior, and no one should be intruding on it. And you shouldn't expect us to intrude on it, and you shouldn't expect all men to change because your particular sexual desire is one thing or another. Caitlin Flannigan, you're fired.

[A]

Caitlyn Flann. No. You know, we love having you at the Atlantic because you say interesting things and you don't really give a shit.

[B]

I don't give a shit.

[A]

Why don't you give a shit?

[B]

Because.

[A]

Because so many people give a shit right now.

[B]

I don't give a.

[A]

Social media and everything else. Why don't you give a shit?

[B]

Because this is why it sounds so corny. I love America. You don't have to be liked. Willy Loman should stop worrying. We have these freedoms that everybody mocks. You can say whatever you want. You know, you'll get a lot of enemies. You know What? There's about 20. You know, there's 30 people you want to see naked. There's 20 people. I really care about how they feel about me, you know, my family and my closest friends. After that, I don't care if people are offended. If they don't like it, then turn this podcast off. Not this. The next episode of this podcast you can listen to. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if somebody likes what you say or not. You have the right to say it, you have the right to think it. You have the right to read the great book and be the artist reader of the book, as Nabokov would say, and make your own meaning of the book. And beyond that, it just doesn't matter.

[A]

Caitlin, thank you for being here.

[B]

Thank you for having me.

[A]

Jeffrey. The Atlantic interview is produced by Diana Douglas and Kevin Townsend, with production help from Kim Lau and Abdullah Fayyad. If you like this podcast, subscribe and rate us. I'm Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of the Atlantic. I'll see you next week.